The Difficulty of Calculating a Substantial Raise

Redditor Sabrine_Heester_2001 was told she was getting a 10% raise at work. The next paycheck she received didn't make any sense, so she emailed the HR department and received this answer. She was making an hourly rate of $26.35, which is nice, but with a 10% raise, it was boosted to $26.38! While any raise in pay is something to celebrate, it's not a 10% raise. Can you see where the math went wrong?

Ten percent can be rendered as 0.10, or it can be rendered as 10/100. Unfortunately, this calculation included both, therefore ten percent was taken of ten percent, so her "raise" was a thousandth of her previous pay, or 2.63 cents. They generously rounded that up to three cents. Most calculators will do percentages for you, but a pencil and paper is all you need to move a decimal point one place to the left and add that to the original pay rate. Doing it quickly in my head gave me $29, but it's actually $28.98. Sabrine_Heester_2001 tells us that reporting this messy math to her boss got everything straightened out quickly, but you have to wonder about the HR department and their history of calculating raises.